I'd like to explore how you could make a character (or NPC) who can handle animals, or how to estimate the financial burden on an individual or organization for having some sort of critters as security.

As far as I can tell, game-mechanic wise, there are a bunch of open questions:

1. Where are the rules for tests in interacting with critters? Do they exist?
2. How much do critters cost?
3. How are critters maintained?

In approaching this, I've been working with a character who is basically a former lone-star para-K9 handler (specifically, a Barghest trainer). Questions that have arisen in my test case are:

What skills should I buy? I've looked through the social skills, reasonable assumptions (a Medicine (veterinary) specialization, etc.), etc. I have come to three ideas:
1) an Animal Handling (specialized by critter type) skill, or even more specialized (Animal handling, separate skill per critter type or big grouping, like "exotic melee weapon").
2) Subspecializations of every charisma-linked skills for interacting with animals
3) A variation of the influence skill group, for critters.

I have no immediate idea on how to price critters, nor how to buy critters with alternate stats or train additional 'tricks.'

For maintenance, I assume something on the basis of additional lifestyle costs for critters, with something like a percentage of human lifestyle costs roughly equal to 5% times body (i.e., a barghest, at body 7, would cost 45% of what a human would, a hellhound 20%), based on the character's lifestyle (maybe arbitrarily capped at "Medium", since only a wierdo would treat a barghest like a luxury pet like a chihuahua).

This should all be covered in the forthcoming critter book Running Wild.

Yes, Running Wild will answer all your questions, including 1, 2, & 3. There is also a new skill group that is presented in Running Wild, which will include Animal Handling (and 3 other skills).

It's not yet available, but it will be. Soon. Or else I'm going to hop a plane and start beating people. (Er, actually, if they see me posting here instead of working... hm... I may be the one getting beaten...)

That's excellent news. I've been hoping for some critter handling stuff since I saw the Animal Attunement Metamagic in Street Magic.

Finally! I've been wanting to get my hands on Running Wild for a long time. Happy beatings,

K.

yay! Running Wild!

Shadowrun hasn't had a decent critter book since WAY back in 2nd Ed. This has been a gap that has desperately needed filling!

Good luck with the beatings, can't want to get my grubby paws on the book!

I really really hope 'soon' means 2009.

It dang well better!

For Tiger eyes:

I assume yall'll also be treating the cyber-augmentation of critters? I always thought the rules from previous versions were... not really existent.

Will there be some variation in the rules for training critters both by 'additional capability' (i.e., teaching a dog or barghest or whatever how to work with a hunter) and base stats (like them peeeps who have their pit bulls run on treadmills?)

pretty sure biodrones (and warforms? biodrone warforms?) have been explicitly mentioned as something that will be in running wild. if not, then you can find the rules for augmenting animals in augmentation.

I see recent mention of someone working on RW Table of Contents which means still some time before we see this book in print. It's starting to look like 09 will slip into 10 with most of the goodies we've been teased with for the past twelve months or so. Still checking every day for any scrap they let drop.

Mmhm... it'll be sooner than you think, Prime Mover.

As a side note, Running Wild is my favorite SR book to date, both for writing it (I loved the sections I was assigned) and for the book itself.

@rob:

Augmenting critters is specifically covered in detail, from cyber/bioware to biodrones to genetweaking. (Someone will undoubtably catch my favorite trivia item from the book, which has to do with the sales of nightlights... and realize that a parent (not me) wrote that bit... lol...)

Training critters to improve their natural skills or learn new skills is included. There is specific coverage of how to train a critter in a way useful to a runner. (Or to a security corp, for devious GMs)

And, voila! See SR4.com...

Did you tweak the training intervals in the end?

Crizh--I don't recall which version of training times was sent to final vs Draft 1/2/3/etc. IIRC, there is an Optional Section for tweaking the training times.

Whatever you went with in the end it's damn good stuff.

I distinctly recall doing a sort of mad, caffeine fueled, arm waving, dance of joy in my seat as I read them.

Yeah, we went with the 'fast' training rules in the end, but stuck in the more realistic times as an optional rule -- that was John's call, but I wanted the more realistic rules stuck in there, so we compromised.